Review of Lessons in Grid Computing: The System Is a Mirror (Hardcover)

Here are a few ideas that I kept after speed reading this book. In Information Technology (IT), we, the people are the resources. Our teams can exist only if we maintain the relationships and we can communicate among ourselves with pleasure and no constraints. If we reuse code and interfaces, we must first use them to begin with. We are the platform to build services and applications, not the operating systems and the chips..

But to say the few things like those described above, the author delves in exuberant verbose. It is obvious he has a deep love for writing fiction. There are too many words and too many stories. In a nutshell, we are told that without humans, IT systems are useless. And as humans, we must read Proust (great French writer - more quoted by others than read -) and Jung (the psychologist who described the collective unconsciousness)to understand ourselves.

This has some value. Many people think mechanical effects solve our life problems: sex techniques bring happiness, or success means selecting MacOS or Linux or Solaris. Computing, like medications prescribed by top doctors, can not bring the happiness via science and technology only.

Why writing 357 pages to say all this? This is a useful book in need to be condensed to about 10% of the book size. In each chapter , a short 5 line summary will be great.

Also the name of Grid Computing is confusing. Sure we believe one day the entire Information Technology will become a grid delivering units of compute power, the same way we have electricity today. We will not need operating systems and CPUs in our offices and homes, we will have a plug in the wall and a meter to read the computing energy used.

The book, that alludes to computing as a service delivery, does nothighlight this meaning of grid computing well enough. Once we have a product eliminating the need to know technicalities like system administration, we willunderstand ourselves as humans first. Then we canmake computer applications and services that are as natural as speech in everyday use.

I work in grid computing,I know many engineers who bought this book, thinking this is about a hands-on lesson on Grid Computing programming. They were disappointed, because the title is misleading. It attracted theaudience which had totally different expectations. The real audience - IT leadership - might have overlooked the book, because of the title.



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